


Inside, Outside, Decommission (Wonder If It's Painful)

by MagitekUnit05953234



Series: Electricity Is in My Soul [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Interlude, MT Prompto Argentum, MT!Prompto, mild body horror of the magitek variety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23371159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagitekUnit05953234/pseuds/MagitekUnit05953234
Summary: The unit is flat on its back in the dust, mostly limp with the exception of one clawed hand scrambling at the stuttering core embedded in its chestplate. Noctis stands over it, usually so quick to dispatch imperial threats, with his sword held loose at his side.He just stands.
Relationships: Prompto Argentum & Noctis Lucis Caelum
Series: Electricity Is in My Soul [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1680952
Comments: 10
Kudos: 175





	Inside, Outside, Decommission (Wonder If It's Painful)

**Author's Note:**

> A brief interlude that takes place somewhere in the middle of You Didn't Have to Say My Name.  
> Title taken from Steam Powered Giraffe's "Prelude to a Dream."

The unit is flat on its back in the dust, mostly limp with the exception of one clawed hand scrambling at the stuttering core embedded in its chestplate. Noctis stands over it, usually so quick to dispatch imperial threats, with his sword held loose at his side.

He just stands.

“What’s wrong?” Prompto flickers his weapon in and out of the void, occupying his hands as he waits for the fight to officially be over. “...Noct?”

“Sorry, I just— look at it.”

Prompto wanders over, joining Noct in his consideration of the fallen unit. It is disabled more or less, the plating of its cuisses both battered so terribly that the mechanics of its lower vestibular system must be all but destroyed. The unit is useless and is fit at this point only for destruction.

Noct’s face twists in a weird way, his gaze flicking from the unit and back to Prompto a few times before settling back on the weakly twitching gauntlet scraping at the surface of the unit’s core.

“It’s a rifle unit,” Prompto says, kneeling down beside it. Unlike Prompto, it’s a fully actualized unit, so there is nothing left within it that could be saved like Prompto was. Nothing left in it to feel pain either, though the approximation it is displaying as it struggles to continue its directive is close enough to make Prompto a little uneasy. “See this symbol on the pauldron? That’s how you know what it is, like... if it doesn’t have its weapon and can’t transfer its data.”

Noct doesn’t reply.

“I got my specialization engraved just before I was taken from the facility,” Prompto pats at where it lays beneath his shirt, inscribed in the reflex enhancer set in his right pectoral. “I was a rifle unit, too.”

One of the unit’s arms is busted too, on closer inspection. There’s a dent in its chestplate that Prompto knows would have destroyed the connector between the unit’s core and the processing unit that controls its left limbs. The only things the unit is able to control at this point are its head and right arm. 

It looks kind of sad, if Prompto stops to think about it. He decides not to.

Metal groans as the unit abandons its efforts on its own core and pushes itself onto its side. One of its legs jerks as the unit tries —and fails— to pull itself to its hands and knees, and Noct recoils as it makes contact with his boots.

“It’s fine,” Prompto pins the unit’s right arm with a hand, barely bothered by the feeble attempts the unit makes to resist being restrained. It is then simple enough to take hold of the unit’s core with his free hand. To press down until it releases from its lock, then to twist it up and out of the unit’s chest. Its red glow flickers and dies within seconds, and the unit follows suit shortly after. It begins to dissolve into miasma the moment the red in its eyes fade to nothing. “There. It’s okay.”

“Prompto,” Noct sounds strangled, and when Prompto looks up Noct’s got a hand curled over his own chest. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Prompto stands and drops the unit’s core into the dirt, crushing it with his foot.

“I—”

“Noct,” Gladio and Ignis are coming over the rise, having apparently finished their engagement with the griffons they were actually out here to hunt. Prompto and Noct had to split up when their hunt was interrupted by a dropship, but it was easy enough to take care of the troops that leapt to the ground from it. “Everything good?”

“Yeah,” Noct sighs and straightens up, dusting off his clothes and turning decisively from the site of the fallen unit’s destructuralization. “Yeah, I’m okay. Everything’s good.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter [@compromisedunit](https://mobile.twitter.com/compromisedunit)!


End file.
